Chapter published in:
Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces: Case studies in honor of Violeta Demonte
Edited by Olga Fernández-Soriano, Elena Castroviejo Miró and Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 239] 2017
► pp. 48–62

Does the verb raise to T in Spanish?

| Rutgers University
| Rutgers University
We test adverb-verb word orders in Peruvian Spanish against analyses of verb movement (Pollock 1989, Embick & Noyer 2001). While the preferred order is V-adv-O, the alternative Adv-V-O is also possible. We propose that the verb raises in overt syntax and morphological insertion targets either the higher or the lower position. In the latter case, morphological requirements force the more computationally costly option of T-to-V lowering. We analyze the ungrammaticality of neg-adv-V as a blocking of the selectional restriction requirements of neg (the extended verbal projection, including T) by the intervening adverb. This distribution is parallel to English do-insertion in negative contexts (I don’t frequently eat vs. * I not frequently eat), where neg selects for a -T category (cf. Williams 1994).
Keywords: word order, adverb, raising, negation, morphological merger
Published online: 14 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.239.03cam
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